Mindful eating: the Victorian food trend that could help you lose weight and transform your health

Lauren Alex O’ Hagan, The Conversation

In recent years, mindfulness – defined as “a mental state or attitude in which one focuses one’s awareness on the present moment” – has become embedded into our everyday language. Mindfulness has helped many people to develop the skills necessary to manage chronic pain, depression, anxiety, stress and sleeping disorders. It has also become a popular way to change eating behaviours under the term “mindful eating”.

Mindful eating encourages people to pay attention to food with all of their senses, noticing the physical and emotional responses that take place before, during and after an eating experience. Mindful eating teaches people to use wisdom to guide eating decisions, acknowledge food preferences non-judgementally and recognise physical hunger cues.

Although its purpose is not to lose weight, mindful eating can help those struggling to follow long-term diets by correcting their attitudes towards “good” and “bad” foods. Eating mindfully is also said to help reduce, emotional eating and promotes the consumption of smaller portions and fewer calories.

Despite its current popularity among psychologists, nutritionists and dietitians, mindful eating is nothing new. In fact, it can be traced back to the late Victorian era and the work of the US health food enthusiast Horace Fletcher.

Dubbed the “great masticator”, Fletcher argued that “head digestion” (a person’s emotional state when eating) played a significant role in their food choices. Consequently, it was advisable to chew each mouthful of food 32 times (one for each tooth) in order to improve one’s physical and mental well-being.